Despite history having demonstrated that Exciter have always been prime coveters of the title of Ottawa's heaviest band there's no decree stating that experimental hardcore/doom metallers Buried Inside aren't entitled for a shot at that esteemed title themselves. Indeed, over a decade of roadwork touring with the likes of Converge, Unearth and High On Fire and the release of 3 full-length albums including 2005's 40-minute opus Chronoclast which was really just one long song has helped boost Buried Inside's profile in the metal scene mostly with their dark, haunting pieces that burrow into the depths of one's soul while bludgeoning the upper cranial senses with thick sludgy doomtastic riffs. The pattern's seemed to have served Buried Inside pretty well within their genre in the past so could they be on to something as well with Spoils Of Failure?

Well….yes and no. The riffs on Spoils Of Failure are still as grandiose and heavy as fuck as they’ve always been….hell, I’d even have to say that they’ve superseded much of the heaviness of their riffs from their previous albums tenfold on this album, with more of a clearer tone and higher volume this time around thanks in part to the production work of Kurt Ballou (Disfear, Misery Index). And the theme of a post-apocalyptic utopia run entirely by machines remains the focal core of Buried Inside’s lyrical ideology, casting bleak images of the last strands of humanity consumed by the same machines it created in such a timeline so efficient and so accurate even George Orwell would get depressed in monitoring very closely.

It’s not only epic in its definition; it’s also what makes listening to this album challenging if not overly lumbering. For one, the titles of all eight songs are replaced with Roman numerals (i.e., "I", "II", etc.) to remind the listener just how far and wide the gap between human contact and technology-related isolation has grown when even the simple concept of coming up with the catchiest song title is practically reduced to a mere number, a product to be consumed and given no afterthought about afterwards. As well, the lyrics are deeply rooted in profoundness and detailed imagery that one has to question how the songwriting technique for Spoils’ was developed solely by a small team of individuals with little outside help or influences before one’s sense of deep wonderment is punctuated by the anguished mid-tempo screams that oversee the sole hint of vocal human emotions prevalent on this disc.

By the climax of Spoils’ 55-minute sonic mindfuck, it’s a rather tough draw to determine whether the members of Buried Inside were reading way more further into this album when they were recording it or whether the listener was in listening to it. In fact, the closing lyric to "I" – "we are condemned to be at war with words" – seems so written in a manner to not only warn of an impending threat of material dominance that it almost seems like it was a warning to the band itself just how far into this album they've invested their own sense of humanity into creating it. It alone just about sums up both Spoils' strengths and shortcomings.